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This is always my issue with things in this space. There's a list of bad things to be fixed or good things to achieve. And then there's a technology like [jazz

This is always my issue with things in this space. There's a list of bad things to be fixed or good things to achieve. And then there's a technology like [jazz hands] blockchain. But when you ask how they relate, it gets very handwavey. When I was at Code for America in 2015, somebody dropped by one of our events to buttonhole me about [jazz hands] blockchain for governments. I listened politely for a while and then asked, "Why would something that is definitionally a central authority need a trustless, distributed system?" They blathered and huffed for a while, but could never answer the question. They walked away thinking I was clearly not bright enough to see how it was all going to change. A couple years later a friend asked me to set down with somebody who wanted to launch a startup. Their customers were companies who wanted employees to be able to safely report sexual harassment and other misbehavior. They had a few existing competitors, so I asked what made this new company different. The would-be founder explained that they would use [jazz hands] blockchain. I asked further, and it turned out that they would use [jazz hands] blockchain internally. So basically a database with extra steps. I pointed out that assault reporters wouldn't be able to see any difference; from the user perspective, all the companies in the market were just saying, "trust us, we definitely won't tell the people paying us anything". The entrepreneur was convinced that it really was different, but if so they couldn't make it clear to me. So now we've had, what, 6 or 7 years where [jazz hands] blockchain was going to revolutionize things and it hasn't made a practical dent in any real industry. Originally I too was willing to call that naive, but it seems an awfully long time to accidentally maintain such perfect innocence.

the_snooze 5y ago
At its heart, the strongest claim blockchain technology offers is pretty good data consistency assurances between nodes that don't trust one another. I guess that's kind of interesting as a technical demonstration, but it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that. This has been around and under continuous development since 2008, and still no actual use case. It seems like the space is full of hype-bro crooks and hype-bro dupes who feed off one another, warping a niche technical toy into whatever get-rich-quick revolutionary fantasy they want.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  The expression you're looking for to describe blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.
- s3tz 5y ago
  That's because everyone fell for the systems fallacy. Blockchain was designed for bitcoin to function, for that purpose alone. Then because it worked for that one use case of a decentralized storage/transfer of value, people assumed they could make it work for everything else. Not how technology works.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I think its important to add, with open group membership to that definition. If there is a known fixed list of nodes participating in the system, blockchain again becomes a bad choice.
- Vetch 5y ago
  > it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that Its utility is much easier to see if you're stuck in a system rife with corruption and have a general lack of trust in central institutions. A key aspect of corruption is that central authorities are not accountable to anyone. With blockchains, you can design systems where game theory via what's encoded into system design, can limit what concentrations of power can do. The centralized powers in bitcoin for example, can't rationally act in way that destroys the value of the system they're participating in. This is totally not true for many developing economies; just that property is already an encouraging one. Working on scaling these systems, making them less resource intensive and proving stronger more formal bounds for open peer to peer friendly non-discriminatory systems that are harder to corrupt and more robust to bad actors is a not a solution in search of a problem.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    Can you elaborate more? It's unclear to me how a data storage technology has any bearing on trust and power relationships, especially in interactions that are largely in meatspace.
outside1234 5y ago
To be fair - it probably has revolutionized money laundering and government bribes.
- Vetch 5y ago
  > government bribes Governments mired in corruption, embezzlement of public funds, dumping toxic waste and ignoring infrastructure and human development are not banning crypto out of the goodness of their heart. They're banning it because it erodes and threatens control of their mismanaged currencies. If we required governments and large corporations to use identifiable addresses then the traceability and immutability of public blockchains makes bribes and corruption much harder to hide. Government spending, which is not used to being held accountable would of course not take kindly to this.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    This seems very whataboutist. Is your serious claim that Bitcoin, et al, aren't increasing bribery? They're helping out other sorts of financial crime quite handily, so this is a claim that would require a lot of evidence. And as to your second paragraph, [citation needed]. As long as we're imagining central authorities mandating the sort of transparency that would make it harder for corruption, we could just use the existing financial system, which is already reasonably well tied to real-world identity. Cryptocurrency in no way helps here.
nberkman 5y ago
I remember when the massive early growth of Napster led to a similar hype cycle around P2P, with overblown articles in Wired proclaiming it to be the answer to everything. Around 2004 I was CTO of a company building a streaming music service and I got a call from the CEO of a P2P-based CDN. I asked him some basic questions trying to find any reason I might consider them. It became clear that it would make no sense for us - their pricing was above the quotes I had received from other CDNs and I had no confidence in their reliability. The only selling point was whatever residual buzz P2P had at that point. He quickly became agitated and began yelling at me about how I "didn't get it". The company was called Red Swoosh and the angry CEO was Travis Kalanick. A few years later he somehow managed to sell it to Akamai, and as I recall it was shut down within a year.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Wow, excellent story. If only he had gone out of business before the sale, we might never have heard from that guy again, and the world would have been much better for it.
shsbdncudx 5y ago
This [jazz hands] _thing_ works once but then drop it, it ruins your [jazz hands] _story_
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  [sarcastic finger quotes]?
- wpietri 5y ago
  Oh, is today the day on HN where we give unwanted writing advice? In that case, I'll just tell you that I don't really listen to people who universalize their individual reactions and act as if they're their only audience member in the world. So next time you want to give feedback, please do it in a fashion where your individual feelings are clearly marked as such, not hyperbolized into the total ruination of the writing in question.

the_snooze 5y ago

At its heart, the strongest claim blockchain technology offers is pretty good data consistency assurances between nodes that don't trust one another. I guess that's kind of interesting as a technical demonstration, but it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that. This has been around and under continuous development since 2008, and still no actual use case. It seems like the space is full of hype-bro crooks and hype-bro dupes who feed off one another, warping a niche technical toy into whatever get-rich-quick revolutionary fantasy they want.

dehrmann 5y ago
The expression you're looking for to describe blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.
s3tz 5y ago
That's because everyone fell for the systems fallacy. Blockchain was designed for bitcoin to function, for that purpose alone. Then because it worked for that one use case of a decentralized storage/transfer of value, people assumed they could make it work for everything else. Not how technology works.
bawolff 5y ago
I think its important to add, with open group membership to that definition. If there is a known fixed list of nodes participating in the system, blockchain again becomes a bad choice.
Vetch 5y ago
> it's hard to see what's actually the practical benefit of that Its utility is much easier to see if you're stuck in a system rife with corruption and have a general lack of trust in central institutions. A key aspect of corruption is that central authorities are not accountable to anyone. With blockchains, you can design systems where game theory via what's encoded into system design, can limit what concentrations of power can do. The centralized powers in bitcoin for example, can't rationally act in way that destroys the value of the system they're participating in. This is totally not true for many developing economies; just that property is already an encouraging one. Working on scaling these systems, making them less resource intensive and proving stronger more formal bounds for open peer to peer friendly non-discriminatory systems that are harder to corrupt and more robust to bad actors is a not a solution in search of a problem.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  Can you elaborate more? It's unclear to me how a data storage technology has any bearing on trust and power relationships, especially in interactions that are largely in meatspace.

outside1234 5y ago

To be fair - it probably has revolutionized money laundering and government bribes.

Vetch 5y ago
> government bribes Governments mired in corruption, embezzlement of public funds, dumping toxic waste and ignoring infrastructure and human development are not banning crypto out of the goodness of their heart. They're banning it because it erodes and threatens control of their mismanaged currencies. If we required governments and large corporations to use identifiable addresses then the traceability and immutability of public blockchains makes bribes and corruption much harder to hide. Government spending, which is not used to being held accountable would of course not take kindly to this.
- wpietri 5y ago
  This seems very whataboutist. Is your serious claim that Bitcoin, et al, aren't increasing bribery? They're helping out other sorts of financial crime quite handily, so this is a claim that would require a lot of evidence. And as to your second paragraph, [citation needed]. As long as we're imagining central authorities mandating the sort of transparency that would make it harder for corruption, we could just use the existing financial system, which is already reasonably well tied to real-world identity. Cryptocurrency in no way helps here.

nberkman 5y ago

I remember when the massive early growth of Napster led to a similar hype cycle around P2P, with overblown articles in Wired proclaiming it to be the answer to everything. Around 2004 I was CTO of a company building a streaming music service and I got a call from the CEO of a P2P-based CDN. I asked him some basic questions trying to find any reason I might consider them. It became clear that it would make no sense for us - their pricing was above the quotes I had received from other CDNs and I had no confidence in their reliability. The only selling point was whatever residual buzz P2P had at that point. He quickly became agitated and began yelling at me about how I "didn't get it". The company was called Red Swoosh and the angry CEO was Travis Kalanick. A few years later he somehow managed to sell it to Akamai, and as I recall it was shut down within a year.

wpietri 5y ago
Wow, excellent story. If only he had gone out of business before the sale, we might never have heard from that guy again, and the world would have been much better for it.

shsbdncudx 5y ago

This [jazz hands] _thing_ works once but then drop it, it ruins your [jazz hands] _story_

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
[sarcastic finger quotes]?
wpietri 5y ago
Oh, is today the day on HN where we give unwanted writing advice? In that case, I'll just tell you that I don't really listen to people who universalize their individual reactions and act as if they're their only audience member in the world. So next time you want to give feedback, please do it in a fashion where your individual feelings are clearly marked as such, not hyperbolized into the total ruination of the writing in question.